Is today the day? Is this when purpose falls out of the sky from the mouth of God to declare what your life has been all about and what shall happen next?
Or is purpose an ongoing evolution, and the needs of this moment define what needs to be done? Is it about a big picture or a momentary picture?
What if it’s all the same?
What if by the fruit of the Spirit, moment by moment, we paint the biggest picture of them all?
Intention is a big deal. Under the law, “intentional” homicide is a more serious time than “reckless” homicide. Reckless homicide means you did something so stupid or foolish that someone died. Intentional homicide means you meant to kill someone. The intentional murderer usually gets put away for life.
The two words work in a positive way, too. You can live your life recklessly, careening from one day to the next, or you can live your life intentionally, always aware of what you’re trying to accomplish and focused on what needs to be done to get there. That does not mean following a boring plan that structures every moment of your life, but it does mean having a sense of how and why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Of course, it’s not as either/or as all that. We all have our reckless moments and our intentional times. I would argue that living life as intentionally as possible is better for us in the long run. Even the reckless person knows that, for after accidentally doing something that turns out well, she may joke, “I meant to do that.”
May we live in such a way that when we look back and reflect on the best of our lives, we may be able to say, “I intended this.”
Not enough sleep night before last, so I went to bed early and woke up here, in the middle of the night. And what thinks have I been thinking …
If I don’t pray out loud, can God hear? If ghosts exist, do they see and hear us? Can they tap our thoughts, so that if I “think” a thank you to a dearly departed, will they know what I thought?
There’s so much that we don’t know about life outside these fleshy vessels. It seems inconceivable that this sentience just stops when the body dies — hence the concept of reincarnation. We must go somewhere when the incarnate self dies, right? We go to heaven, or we hop into a newly gestating being and start the journey all over again?
Does it matter? Does the idea that we — whatever it is that defines who we are — will continue to exist after this life make us behave any differently than if we die when we die? The idea of an afterlife is a reassuring concept — we’re gone from this existence, but we’re somewhere else, “a better place” hopefully. There’s also something reassuring about the concept of eternal rest: Go back to being a confused and naive 15-year-old again, knowing but not knowing anything about how this life works, starting over from scratch? No thanks, right?
It matters, but what matters most is that we make the best life we can out of this one, the one we’re passing through right this moment. Just as we have no control over our past actions, and we can’t know the future — all we have is today, and yesterday and tomorrow are abstract concepts — we don’t know where we were before we were conceived and born, and we don’t know where our soul goes when our body dies. It’s the great mystery, and it’s why we build faith in a next life.
Whatever comes next — whether we go to our great reward, or our punishment, or cease to exist altogether, or journey into another body, or change form like a caterpillar into a butterfly — it seems to me that we owe it to ourselves and to each other to be kind and not waste the chance to make the best of each moment, “to seek out new life and new civilizations” as we boldly go into each new day.
I don’t know how to conclude this thought. Maybe it will take you in a direction I can’t imagine as I write this down, and you can tell me where I’m going with this.
And isn’t it miraculous that we have this thing called language, where these symbols on the screen or the page represent words you can hear in your head as if I had spoken them? Isn’t it amazing that this — LOVE — means something completely different from this — AARDVARK — and we have this way to try to convey concepts and understanding across the miles and years, so there’s a way to touch souls and help each other out and know we’re not alone?
Such mysterious thoughts in the middle of night when I’m awake when I usually would be sleeping. Where do we go when we sleep? Where do we go when we die? Where were we before? What was I doing in 1573? What will I be up to in 2171? What are my sleeping dogs doing wherever their souls are as they lie next to me? What are they thinking and what do they want when they’re awake?
We can never fully know the answers, though we long for a time when we do. May every day be an adventure in discovery, however.
• I spent the week listening to the audiobook of Michael Connelly’s new novel Resurrection Walk, featuring Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller and retired detective Harry Bosch. During a scene at Harry’s house, I thought I heard a reference to a three-record Miles Davis concert album from the 1960s that Bosch had purchased online through “Rare Vinyl,” a store in Nashville.
When I circled back and looked up Rare Vinyl, it turns out to be a U.K.-based online store, and although there are quite a few great stores selling LPs in Nashville, none of them seem to be called Rare Vinyl. And finally, I can’t find a reference to a real three-record live album by Miles Davis from the 1960s.
I’m thinking I didn’t quite hear it right. But Bosch’s love of vinyl and jazz are among his most endearing traits.
• I stopped for gas, and while I was pumping a pickup truck rolled up and three guys got out. Within seconds I heard the legendary F-word about a dozen times. My hearing is about what you’d expect from a septuagenarian, so I was quickly able to fantasize that they were a party of duck hunters and Duck! They couldn’t wait to get out on the ducking lake, and duck that anyway.
It seems I am easily amused. I guess you had to be there. Duck it.
• I passed a horse trailer on Highway 22 and two big old horses were hanging their heads out the window. The big beasts looked like happy dogs loving the feel of the wind in their face.
That’s all — I just wanted to write it down so I remembered the image, because it made me smile.
The clock says it is an hour earlier than it was exactly 24 hours ago, and we will be forgiven if we spend an extra hour in bed today. It is the end of daylight-saving time and the return of standard time.
In my neck of the woods, the sun rose at 7:32 a.m. yesterday and will rise at 6:33 a.m. today, setting at 5:35 p.m. yesterday and 4:34 p.m. today.
I miss those summer days when the sun rose at 5 and set around 9 — daylight-saving time “rescued” us from the horror of 4 a.m. sunrises and 8 p.m. sunsets. Come to think of it, “saving” the daylight to match our circadian rhythms may not be the worst idea ever.
What if we abandoned clocks altogether? Would we be that worse off? We wouldn’t know when the train leaves or the games begin, of course — how would we manage? Or are we micromanaging our lives now? Does it really matter that the deadline is 5 p.m., or is “late this afternoon” sufficient? The hands of the clock have been holding us for so long that we’re not sure how to live without them.
Much ado revolves around being on time, but perhaps time is on us, an ever-present stressor. We live a soccer game of a life, where we have two halves to play but we’re not sure exactly when the second half will end.
Should we disconnect the clocks? Never really know what time it is? It would be a jarring change from now, when we carry a precise timepiece in our pockets synchronized to each other all the time — it was exactly 5:43 a.m. Nov. 4, 2023, when I wrote this paragraph.
It’s quite an invention, this “time,” and we fantasize about moving back and forth through it, as if time were a real thing, but in reality it seems we only move in one direction. After all, if we could go backward, folks would already be doing so, wouldn’t they, and we would be meeting people from the future regularly? Or are the wealthiest among us gamblers equipped with a 2050 edition of Gray’s Sports Almanac?
We mark the return of “standard time” with reminders and conversations about whether daylight-saving is a good idea or a silly one. Should we stay in “standard” time forever and dispense with the manipulation? Or is the conversation itself a silly manipulation, distracting us from the fact that we are living in a remarkable time, or at least (to quote the legendary curse) an interesting time?
He watched the phrases dance across the page.
He heard the melodies. He felt the rhythms. He smelled fresh lilacs and tasted mint. And all the world burst forth from on the page.
Tensions, pent up, eased. His shoulders relaxed, having never sensed their tightness.
The cascading waterfall in his chest slowed to a trickle.
“So, this is peace,” he whispered, and was well.
A respite from the rush of frantic need, the quiet nearly overwhelmed him until he sank into it and allowed it to surround his troubled soul, to comfort him with its nothing. He scarcely had noticed the weight until it was lifted, and now this freedom astonished him with its lightness.
He heard the scratch at the corner of his consciousness, and he knew the relief was temporary. One by one, the troubles would settle on his shoulders again, but now he knew what it felt like to shrug them off, and perhaps he would learn to shrug.
Sometimes I eye myself in the mirror and see my father looking back at me. Other times it’s one of my brothers. Silly, of course: It’s really me. But I see the family resemblance.
I’m spending quite some time today thinking about the passage of time. Time doesn’t actually pass — it’s always now. We can describe what just happened or what happened a long time ago, but the description will be filtered through now, as it has to be, because there’s only now. Any recording or recollection is necessarily not as good as in the instant.
It’s all one journey, from waking consciousness, to awareness of consciousness, to learning to walk, and moving about. We touch base with our memories and compare notes with other people, but it’s all one journey of awareness and discovery.
Oh, how profound and pretentious I sound, as if disclosing a secret of the universe newly unearthed. What fools we mortals be — and all these years later, I have a new understanding of what old Will meant when he wrote that line. I am an old dog still learning very old tricks in hopes of mastering them someday.
